#i went the 'entering stem undergrad' route

[sovonight]

Dude i like rly admire you,, youre such a good artist AND youre going into the stem field!! Youre so amazing:,,) Im also trying to go into stem and continue my interest in art. I was wondering if you ever find it hard to do both and any tips for someone in stem?

ahh i’m really flattered to hear that, & that you’d ask me abt it! to answer ur question, i might ramble on a bit, but:

i’ve never found it hard to do both. ofc that’s easier for me to say now that i’ve graduated lol, but i’ve never gone, “oh my god, how am i going to balance art with this?”. keep in mind however that i didn’t have to work during school, so any time outside of class and the occasional student org activity was my own. (i also lead a very lonely social life so i had more time than most.)

on art: i lost a looooot of sleep staying up late to draw bc that was when i could draw, but it was a happy loss and it was important to me to have that time to myself. i also really valued drawing as a mode of interaction, and was motivated by the media i love, characters i love, and the ppl i enjoy interacting w online. rly, just enjoy it! find any aspect of art that makes it worth it to you

on schoolwork: to give u an idea of how still doing art on the side might have impeded my studies, i kept my gpa above 3.5 for all four years & joined an honor society (probably due to my gpa), but bc i wasn’t totally focused on engineering i didn’t get into internships or do research as an undergrad. the internship i did get was in my 4th year, and i got the impression from my professor that i was very behind in that respect. (i think most people get experience in the summer or during junior year, at least.) still, i got accepted into a few ~prestigious~ universities for masters degrees (and 1 phd), so maybe what i did was enough. academic/career-related tips:

if submerging urself in STEM 24/7 stifles you, & if having a creative outlet helps you in ur studies, consider taking some art classes! i only took 2 art classes in total but they were both breaths of fresh air after all my stem courses, and i can’t describe what a relief it was to have classes that gave me an excuse to assemble collages, and solve compositions instead of equations

the future is coming sooner than you think! u dont have to worry much in ur early years, but if you can, try to get an internship/do research at some point as an undergrad. i hear it makes it easier to find a job after graduating, and honestly, just gathering as much experience as u can probably helps.  if you don’t get replies back, don’t despair– many job offers are made through personal connections anyway

and that’s why you might wanna consider talking to your professors! consider going to talk to them during office hours if they seem even vaguely welcoming. professors’ office hours are usually quite empty, and it really doesn’t hurt to talk to them. if it helps, the first time i went to a professor’s office hours about something that wasn’t classwork, i’d prepared a throwaway question abt grad school to talk about & ended up getting offered an internship. u never know

u can also go to job fairs for internship and job type stuff, but i never went so i can’t talk about it lol

if you need resume material but don’t have an internship, you can volunteer with some student orgs & seek out that experience (apparently it demonstrates initiative)

if ur thinking abt going for a phd, research is something of an unspoken prerequisite to getting into a phd program (unless you have a professor on your side who’s vouching for you)

if you apply for grad school & haven’t done research you might only get into masters programs, like i did. then when you ask professors if they accept masters students in their research groups the professors look at you funny, and tell you that they only take phd students, and if you wanted to transfer from a masters to a phd you should just start out as a phd student in the first place, ‘cause phd students get priority. (but 1 nice professor offered to carve out a spot for a masters student in his research group, so you never know)

the takeaway here is that if u have a professor (or other person of influence) who’ll vouch for you, you can do many things. i heard a story abt someone who was rejected from grad school, but a professor who worked there wanted them, so the professor got the admission decision reversed and they were accepted in. whether that was right or not is a whole other question, but connections can do wonders